Conventionally, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2008/0063570 discloses a sample analyzer for analyzing components in a sample by measuring a measurement specimen prepared from the sample and a reagent. In the sample analyzer described in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2008/0063570, a plurality of reagent containers are held in a reagent holding section, and a reagent aspirating pipette is inserted into the reagent containers to aspirate reagents therefrom. Every time a reagent aspirating operation by the reagent aspirating pipette is performed, the sample analyzer detects a liquid level in a reagent container by using a liquid level sensor provided at the tip of the reagent aspirating pipette, so as to determine whether or not a necessary amount of reagent for preparing a measurement specimen is remaining in the reagent container. Based on the detection result, the remaining amount of the reagent to be aspirated is obtained. If the remaining amount of the reagent is less than a predetermined amount, a warning is displayed on a display section of a control apparatus such as a personal computer that is provided to the sample analyzer.
However, in the sample analyzer described in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2008/0063570, in order to reduce time necessary for the sample analyzer to be in a measurement standby state, the liquid level detection operation is not performed before the measurement is performed. The liquid level detection operation is performed when aspirating a reagent, and the remaining amount of the reagent is calculated. For this reason, there is a case where insufficiency of the remaining amount of the reagent in the reagent container held in the reagent holding section is recognized only after a measurement operation is started and the operation to aspirate the reagent is performed. In the case where insufficiency of the remaining amount of the reagent is recognized after the start of the measurement, the user needs to search, at the time, a refrigerator or the like for a necessary reagent and set the reagent in the sample analyzer. However, the reagents to be used in the analysis include a reagent which is stored in a frozen state and defrosted before use or a reagent which is used after dissolving freeze-dried reagent powder in purified water. Therefore, in the above conventional sample analyzer, there is a case where it takes time to replace the reagents and restart the measurement.